"Uncompensated care" isn't actually that much of overall spending. Something like 2% of all healthcare dollars.
The main drivers of cost increases are advances in technology, the aging of society and overall higher demand for "health" in a wealthy society.
I don't really see the "crisis" that "forced" Obama and the Dems to actually put Obamacare into law. Surveys have consistently shown that ~85% of people with insurance coverage were happy with their coverage and most of the people who were considered "without coverage" were so of their own volition. There is a contingent of people with pre-existing conditions who wanted coverage but could only get it at a high cost and they complained a lot and became the focus of a lot of anecdotal sob stories. Well, you don't make policy by "sob story". These people could have been singled out for some level of subsidy (not my preference, which is to do nothing for them, but that's probably not going to fly in a society as soft-headed as the US of 2012). Then, there are some inefficiencies in the individual coverage market due to the fact that most people get their coverage from their employers and those inefficiencies could be taken care of for the most part by equalizing the tax treatment of both markets, which would have the effect of making individual policies closer in price to group policies.
So, what we ended up with is a stealth welfare program designed to solve the "problems" of a very small proportion of the population, but to do so in a way that redistributes wealth from both the rich and the young to the poor and the middle-aged.
Great, more social engineering by people who wouldn't merit the title "engineer" unless "sanitation" were the adjective modifying it.
